Burma, rising under an aggressive dynasty, overruns Chiang Mai and Laos and makes war on the Thai.

In 1569 Burmese forces, joined by Thai rebels, capture the city of Ayutthaya and carry off the royal family to Burma.

Dhammaraja (1569-90), a Thai governor who had aided the Burmese, is installed as vassal king at Ayutthaya.

Thai independence is restored by his son, King Naresuan (1590-1605), who turns on the Burmese and drives them from the country by 1600.

Setthathirat, after the departure from Chiang Mai of the Burmese army of occupation, returns to the city to regain the throne, which his father had secured and bequeathed to him, but he return of Bayinnaung prevents Setthathirat from gaining control.

Setthathirat allies with the Shans to achieve a victory but is eventually forced by the Burmese to fall back.

Setthathirat’s anti-Burmese alliance with the Shans disintegrates in 1559.

Bayinnaung, the expansionist king of the Toungoo dynasty of Lower Burma, has unified his country and conquered the Shan States.

Taking as a pretext for war the refusal in 1563 of the Siamese to acknowledge his suzerainty, he marches eastward into Siam to overrun and occupy the Thai state of Chiang Mai in 1564.

Setthathirat I, sovereign of the Lao kingdom of Lan Xang, had married a princess from Ayutthaya and formed a political alliance with the Thai against their common enemy, Burma.

Burmese forces now move west from Chiang Mai to invade laotian territory and besiege Vien Chan (now Vientiane), Setthathirat’s new capital, but withdraw from the area in 1565 the face of fierce and continuous Laotian resistance.

The Burmese send their own princes to serve as rulers of Lanna when the dynasty of Mengrai becomes extinct in 1578.